LONDON – In his first big foreign policy test since his landslide election victory, Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned Monday that Britain will not support President Donald Trump’s threat to target cultural sites in Iran.

After he spoke to Trump on Sunday, Johnson made no comment about the wisdom of the U.S. president’s decision to authorize the targeted killing last week of top Iranian military leader Qasem Soleimani.

Instead, the prime minister said Britain “will not lament” the death of Soleimani, “given the leading role he has played in . . . the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians and western personnel.” Johnson also echoed other European leaders who have called for de-escalation from “all sides.”

On Monday, Johnson’s official spokesman said the prime minister would not back strikes against cultural sites, pointing to international treaties that forbid such targets.

Johnson is under pressure to support Trump and the United States, Britain’s closest ally, while at the same time trying to defuse the conflict, protect Britain’s soldiers and sailors in the Middle East, and keep a bellicose American president at arm’s length.

Johnson is a student of history – and remembers well how former British prime minister Tony Blair was seen as the gullible, junior partner to President George W. Bush and his headlong rush to war in Iraq.

As Britain prepares to leave the European Union at the end of the month, Johnson needs Trump. The prime minister very much wants to begin negotiating a free trade with Washington, to show his country that his Brexit crusade was worth the price.

Britons are watching, too, whether Johnson can remain his own man in his relationship with Trump and represent British interests first.

While not as exposed as the U.S. military, Britain has 400 troops stationed in Iraq, plus British embassies and British businesses, including oil infrastructure, across the Middle East.

The Royal Navy is currently patrolling the Strait of Hormuz off Iran, serving as deterrent against attacks on commercial shipping.

British troops in Iraq saw their training mission “paused” over the weekend amid the heightened tensions, according to a statement from the Combined Joint Task Force coalition. The British soldiers are training Iraqi Security Forces.

As Trump wrapped up his Florida vacation on Sunday, he warned that if Iran took military action against the United States he may order attacks on Iranian cultural sites, which could constitute a war crime under international law.

The president tweeted that the United States would “quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner.”

Trump threatened Iraq, too. After the Iraqi parliament on Sunday called to expel foreign troops, Trump warned he would impose “very big sanctions” on the nation.

Like Trump, Johnson had also been on vacation, staying with his girlfriend on the Caribbean island of Mustique, until his return Sunday. The prime minister was criticized for not issuing a statement earlier, for allowing 68 hours to pass before he weighed in on the U.S. attack.

An official spokesman for 10 Downing Street, who by protocol briefs reporters without use of his name, said Johnson was in contact with his ministers over the weekend, and that Britain’ s foreign secretary had issued a first statement on the U.S. attack.

Johnson’s spokesman said his government did not believe Trump would follow through on his threats to attack Iranian cultural sites, but he cautioned that the 1954 Hague convention demands protection of cultural property in the event of armed conflict.

Johnson is trying to strike a balancing act, crafting careful language that shows support for both the United States and European leaders.

“The language he is using is very interesting,” said Robin Niblett, director of Chatham House, a London think tank. Niblett said Johnson “has to be very careful about signals he sends indirectly” to Germany, France and Italy, to the Trump administration and to the Iranians themselves, “so he doesn’t turn the U.K. into a target.”

Niblett noted that there is little support domestically for “gung-ho U.K. foreign policy” against Iran.

Johnson can’t be seen “leaning too far forward alongside the Americans on the maximum pressure line,” Niblett said. The prime minister is trying to “keep himself as flexible as possible and just not get himself cornered in any shape or form if he can help it.”

The British news media reported that Johnson wasn’t told about the U.S. airstrike against Suliemani in advance. Ryan Crocker, a former U.S. ambassador to Iraq and Afghanistan, told the BBC that was a mistake.

“Britain is and has been for a number of years our foremost ally,” he told the broadcaster. “When we undertake an action like this, it can have grave consequences for our allies. We, I think, owe it to them to consult in advance.”

The Times of London carried a front-page article on Monday with the headline, “We will kill UK troops, warns Iran.”

An unnamed source in Iran’s elite Quds Force told the paper that British soldiers could be “collateral damage” in any retaliatory attacks in the Middle East directed at the U.S. military.

Hamid Baeidinejad, Iran’s ambassador to Britain, dismissed the article. He tweeted: “I strongly condemn the vicious lie and provocative news by #Times today. I will ask the concerned UK authorities to take swift action to stop such malicious false propaganda in this very sensitive time.”

Johnson on Monday also issued a joint statement, alongside German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron, calling on “all parties to exercise utmost restraint and responsibility. The current cycle of violence in Iraq must be stopped.”

The three European leaders also called on Iran “to refrain from further violent action or proliferation,” and urged Iran “to reverse all measures inconsistent” with the now unraveling pact to curtail Iran’s nuclear weapons development.

Meanwhile in Brussels, NATO ambassadors who met Monday for an emergency session on Iran called for “restraint and de-escalation,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said. Stoltenberg condemned Iranian actions and declined to offer his own thoughts about Soleimani’s killing.

The 29-nation alliance suspended its training mission in Iraq for the country’s security forces after the Thursday attack. Stoltenberg said that NATO ambassadors had received a briefing from several U.S. officials about the American reasoning for the mission against the senior Iranian military leader. He did not say when the training mission might resume.

“A new conflict would be in no one’s interest,” Stoltenberg said. “We are ready to restart the training when the situation on the ground makes that possible.”

NATO allies are wary of being sucked into a conflict between Iran and the United States. The alliance would be tested if Tehran attacked the United States and U.S. leaders were to trigger NATO’s all-for-one, one-for-all mutual-defense clauses, as they did in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.

But Stoltenberg insisted there was a “very strong unity from all allies” in response to a reporter’s question about whether there was any concern about Soleimani’s death.

E.U. foreign ministers will hold an emergency meeting on Friday in Brussels to discuss how to respond to the crisis, diplomats said Monday. The foreign ministers will discuss whether to trigger a process that could eventually lead to the reimposition of sanctions on Iran and the full unraveling of the nuclear deal.

– – –

The Washington Post’s Michael Birnbaum in Brussels contributed to this report.

Copy the Story Link

« Previous

‘Joker,’ ‘Parasite,’ ‘1917,’ ‘Little Women’ land Writers Guild nominations

Next »

Oil price keeps rising as industry eyes Iran conflict